Powerful light laptop with long battery life?

Blue_Fox

Commendable
Jul 6, 2016
3
0
1,510
Hi all!
I'm going to university in oktober this year and I'm in search for a decent, affordable, powerful laptop with a rather long battery life.

As suggested, I filled in the questionnaire:

1. What is your budget?
<1200 euros. Preferably <1000.

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
14"-15.6" screen
<=1" height.

3. What screen resolution do you want?
>=1920x1080

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
Portable! I'll often carry it with me to university. However, for making annotations during the lectures I prefer to use pencil and paper. I'll thus use the PC for the lessons design, computer science, ... and at home for some video and photo work too.

At home I have a rather good 23" FHD external screen. I won't use it much for critical colour work on the go, only at home.

5. How much battery life do you need?
>4 hours light use (web browsing, slideshows, word processing...)
It seems most interesting laptops fail concerning this aspect.

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)?
No, I'm afraid I won't have much time for this!

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
3D CAD: SolidEdge
3D: Blender (Cycles renderer)
Video editing: HD h.264 editing with Davinci Resolve (Blackmagic)
Photo editing: Capture One

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
>250GB SSD
Preferably also a >500GB hard disk in addition to the SSD.
No problem to upgrade it by myself.

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
I would like to use this laptop for at least the coming three years at university (engineering) and also thereafter for less demanding tasks.

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
None if possible, it's extra weight.

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.
We have good experiences with Dell, Samsung (hardware only) and HP.

13. What country do you live in?
Flanders, Belgium.

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
I would like to run Linux (Ubuntu) in addition to Windows 10.

So, regarding the specs I think I want this:
- i7-6700HQ
- NVidia GTX 960m 4GB (or similar)
- <=2.8kg (6.17 pounds) and <=25mm (1") height
- >4 hours battery life

And, if possible,
- 100% sRGB, >800/1 contrast, IPS, >300nits
- USB-C with Thunderbolt 3
- PCI SSD
- DDR4 2133MHz memory

I did some research and currently the Dell 7559 is my favourite as it seems to do everything I want for a reasonable price. It's strong point is its battery life.

Do you have some other suggestions, thoughts or ideas? Please let me know!
 

Blue_Fox

Commendable
Jul 6, 2016
3
0
1,510
I've just ordered the Dell 7559 along with a nice Samsung EVO 850 500GB M.2 SSD (the latter wasn't that much more expensive than the 250GB version).
I'll report back later!